Memoir Quotes - Page 3

• Memoir ... satisfies our need for gossip and intimacy, for testimony and confessional, and in this world of spin, offers a truthful account of what it means to succeed or fail, to love and lose, to break your heart and mend it again.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Heart, Mean, Gossip

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• In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

  David Leavitt

  Memories, Thinking, Degrees

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• I don't feel any ethical dilemma when I write. In my memoir, I was able to write with candor about the two most difficult people in the world to write with candor about - mom and dad. Everything else is downhill from there.

  Said Sayrafiezadeh

  Mom, Dad, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Everyone knows that a lot of memoirs have made-up scenes; it's obvious. And everyone knows that half the time at least fictions contain literal autobiographical truths. So how do we decide what's what, and does it even matter?

  Lauren Slater

  Doe, Fiction, Half

  Lauren Slater (2000). “Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir”, Random House Incorporated

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• I'm making a kind of a memoir of certain aspects and times in my life. Now that I'm older I can look back and analyze some things, and see the root of things.

  Lourdes Portillo

  Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

  Dani Shapiro

  Hurt, Writing, Creative

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• I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.

  Harlan Coben

  Writing, Would Be, Boring

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• I think the act of lying can be separated from the genre of memoir. Though often times, people are unaware of their own subjectivity.

  Rob Roberge

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.

  Karen Abbott

  Rose, Musical, Chance

  Source: tech.blorge.com

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• When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, 'I'm not old enough. I'm not distinguished enough.' But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.

  Julia Cameron

  Book, Home, Writing

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• A lot of folks just get it in their head that, for instance, like writing memoirs is just easy. You just write down what happened. It doesn't quite work that way.

  Homer Hickam

  Writing, Way, Easy

  Source: interviewingauthors.com

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• I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

  Danielle Trussoni

  Believe, Character, Should Have

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.

  Isabel Allende

  Memories, Lying, Writing

  Interview with Jordan E. Rosenfeld, www.writersdigest.com. August 27, 2008.

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• I'm writing this memoir from the perspective of somebody who's prosperous and has means. Having said that, one of the things that I think I discovered about those additional years is that I don't think they really are added to the end of life.

  Anna Quindlen

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I have studied the enemy all my life. I have read the memoirs of his generals and his leaders. I have even read his philosophers and listened to his music. I have studied in detail the account of every damned one of his battles. I know exactly how he will react under any given set of circumstances. And he hasn't the slightest idea of what I'm going to do. So when the time comes, I'm going to whip the hell out of him.

  George S. Patton

  Life, Ideas, Leader

  War As I Knew It (1947).

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• The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Morning, Book, Yellow

  "Brown : The Last Discovery of America". Book by Richard Rodriguez, 2003.

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• My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs.

  Manuel Puig

  Writing, Literature, Fantasy

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• I love memoirs, particularly obscure ones because the writer is usually a regular guy just telling what happened to him and to his friends. What these tales lack in artfulness they make up for in passion and authenticity. For a writer of fiction, they are solid gold. I have stolen so much from memoirs it's ridiculous.

  Steven Pressfield

  Passion, Guy, Gold

  Interview with Will Duquette, www.patheos.com. May 21, 2014.

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• The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.

  Donald Miller

  Writing, Reason

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• The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians.

  Margaret Thatcher

  History, Politician, Hindsight

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• I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it.

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Brother, Love Life

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• I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.

  Sally Ride

  Television, Made, Havens

  "A Conversation With Sally Ride; Painful Questions From an Ex-astronaut" by Claudia Dreifus, www.nytimes.com. August 26, 2003.

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• When Goldie Hawn wrote her memoirs, no one said Goldie Hawn was snitching. When Jane Fonda wrote her memoirs, no one said Jane Fonda was snitching.

  Karrine Steffans

  Snitch, Said, Jane

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• Interest in reading memoirs is universal. What has happened is that people are writing about more and more outrageous things. Our threshold for weirdness - you can't have just a normal childhood - has gone way up.

  Sara Nelson

  Reading, Writing, People

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• Isn't this amazing? Clinton is getting $8M for his memoir, Hillary got $8M for her memoir. That is $16M for two people who for eight years couldn't remember anything.

  Jay Leno

  Eight, Years, Two

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